Archetypes
by KnightedRogue
Summary: Han does meta on his own life. HSLO humor, postROTJ


A/N: This is an old, very tongue-in-cheek humor story, written half in response to the opening of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie awhile back and half in response to the discussion of archetypes on the Echo Base forums. Please don't take it seriously. :)

Leia Organa Solo stepped into the fresher, fully anticipating rest after what amounted to a day-long, full-fledged strafing run on her nerves. It was a conspiracy, she decided, one that seemed to include the chief of state, a delegate from Duro, her children and her husband.

She suspected her brother fit in there somewhere, but he'd managed to keep his hands clean.

Her hair was tangled and matted, fitted all day into a tight braid; it had earned her a headache on top of it all. She looked inside the medicine cabinet, found various vitamin tablets loose on the shelf, counted to ten before she called to her three mischievous children for "misplacing" weeks worth of supplements, then decided it was too much effort to care and shut the cabinet door. She undressed, moved into the stall and sighed as the water hit her back.

If nothing else she understood what simple pleasures were.

There was a knock and a rush of air: a muffled voice with her name on its tongue.

"Yes?" she said.

"Kids are in bed." She could almost feel her husband's crooked grin. "You can come out now."

"I am _not_ hiding." She flung her hair into the water flow. "I'm relaxing."

Han chuckled and she worried. "You haven't relaxed since the day I met you."

She stayed silent, the comment ringing too true to warrant a response.

"Question," he said. "Did you see that big holofilm that came out this week?"

"Which one?"

"The action one, with the pirates?" He waited a second, then continued. "It had a naïve kid, an older smartass, and this girl."

She wasn't paying him slightest bit of attention. "Really?"

"Really." He said. "Does that seem familiar to you?"

"Two men and a woman fighting pirates?"

"Well," his voice felt nearer, "they weren't really fighting them. I don't know."

"It obviously made a big impression on you, then."

He ignored her. "You don't think that we're part of a continual archetypal set of laws that appeal to the masses because we all inherently want good to win over evil and establish for ourselves these cross-cultural expectations of what should be in a mythological story?" He blurted it out, then looked shocked at himself for doing so.

She frowned. "Archetypes? Like _fictional_ archetypes?"

"Yeah." Han paused, and she opened the stall door to look at him in disbelief. "What?"

"You're being serious."

"This kid acted like – "

"Luke." She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself. "Several people do. And having a woman as part of the cast does not make her me. Or me, her."

"I didn't mean that." He grabbed her brush and tossed it to her. "It didn't sound so stupid until I said it."

"I suspect that happens to you often." She brushed out her hair, grimacing at the chrono's display. "I wonder if your smartass counterpart has the same problem."

"Gods, I love your condescending sense of humor." His expression bespoke of little actual love.

She pouted her lips at him, and then raised her eyebrows. "I'm assuming good defeated evil in the holofilm, then?"

"Well, it got all twisted up in postmodern jargon of preferences and the gray in between black and white. But yeah." He grinned. "Girl ended up with the hero. No one important died."

"Startling criteria you have there. And someday a holofilm is going to show a heroine that does not end up with a hero."

"Because that's degrading." His tone implied that he had no idea why he should say it, only that he should.

"Because it's degrading," she echoed. "Out of unintentional curiosity, did the girl end up with the naïve boy or the smartass man?"

He followed her as she swept past him into their bedroom, exchanging the towel for a white robe and settling herself onto the bed. "The kid got her this time. She double-crossed the smartass."

"Really?"

"Really. You'd love her."

"I bet." Leia stretched out her legs, leaned up against the headboard of their bed. "If we followed archetypes, I should have wound up with Luke."

Han sidled up to the bed, unabashedly discarding his shirt and working on his belt. "Uh-huh," he murmured, obviously not paying attention as he reached the bed, skimmed his fingers up her leg, and leaned over her. "Have I mentioned how much I love your genetics?"

"You have."

"I could've done without the rest of your family – "

She closed her eyes, moved over so he had room. "So could we all."

" – but I like that the kid can't have you. Gives the smartasses hope."

She laughed as he settled beside her, his lips sliding up to her neck, his hands smoothing out the robe on her stomach. "You never needed the encouragement."

He'd reached her ear, kissed and bit until she was feeling infinitely more relaxed than when she'd left the fresher. "Still don't," he said, and Leia finally turned toward him, twining her legs with his and kissing him lightly, all the while thinking that there were a couple aspects of the pirate thing she might take him up on.

She's always been more of a smartass girl anyway.


End file.
